The Blue Clown

Derry, Maine – January 8, 1985 – 9:17 p.m.

The abandoned textile mill crouched on the edge of the canal district like something already dead that had forgotten to lie down. Boarded windows stared blindly at the frozen night. The chain-link fence sagged in rust-colored defeat, and the old sign—DERRY MILLS – EST. 1897—hung on by threads of peeling paint.

Behind a crumbling stack of rotting pallets near the loading dock, Maya Torres made herself small. Twelve years old, knees jammed against her chest, arms locked tight around her shins. Her breath escaped in tiny white clouds that vanished almost before they formed. The house on Ferry Street had become too loud again—glass breaking in rhythmic fury, voices climbing the same tired stairs of rage. She had thought the mill would be quiet. Safe. Empty.

It was not.

At the fence line stood Pennywise.

The clown did not move. The red balloon floated beside it at precisely the height of a twelve-year-old’s shoulder, tethered by nothing visible. It did not sway in the windless air; it simply was.

The clown lifted its face and inhaled slowly, deeply. The snow crust around its boots crackled and blackened with each savoring breath.

Then, soft as snowfall, the voice drifted across the loading dock:

“I smell a little bird who flew too far from the nest…”

Maya’s breath snagged in her throat. She pressed her face harder into her knees.

The red balloon began to drift forward—slow, deliberate, gliding through a gap in the fence. It did not bob. It knew exactly where she was.

Pennywise followed half a step behind, boots making no sound on the frozen ground. The deadlights behind the painted eyes glowed brighter, throwing long orange reflections across the rusted metal siding.

The balloon stopped ten feet from the pallets. Hung there. Perfectly still.

Inside Maya’s skull, a voice that was not spoken aloud bloomed:

Want to see something funny, Maya? Something really, really funny?

Her shoulders began to shake—not from cold.

Then the shape stepped fully into the moonlight.

First the shadow: too long, too many arms, too many fingers, spilling across the pallets and up the wall like ink poured in the wrong direction. For a heartbeat the shadow moved on its own. Then it snapped into alignment as the thing itself appeared.

Pennywise did not walk. It glided—boots floating a fraction above the ground, leaving no prints in the new snow. The filthy white suit was darker tonight, sodden with something that was not water. The ruff hung in wet tatters. Greasepaint had run in long black streaks from the corners of the eyes to the jaw, like tears that refused to dry.

The clown stopped beside the balloon. One gloved hand—fingers too long, too many joints—reached out and took the string. The balloon rose until it floated at the exact height of a child’s face.

Pennywise tilted its head. Very slowly.

The deadlights flared—bright orange searchlights sweeping the shadows behind the pallets.

“Maya…” The voice was not loud, not theatrical. Soft. Almost fatherly. “I know you’re there, little bird. I can hear your heart going pit-pat-pit-pat like a trapped mouse. Don’t be afraid. I’m just an old friend who wants to play.”

Another gliding step forward. Now the full face was visible: smile stretched wider than the greasepaint should allow, teeth shifting and multiplying when the eye tried to count them.

The balloon bobbed once—gently—as though nodding.

Maya made a tiny, choked sound. Her hands flew to her mouth too late.

Pennywise’s smile split further. The corners tore small wet rips in the white makeup.

“There you are,” it whispered.

The deadlights locked on.

The air grew colder. Frost bloomed outward from the clown in sharp crystalline spikes across the pallets.

One impossibly long finger rose, beckoning.

“Come out, Maya. Come out and see the circus. We’ve saved you the best seat.”

The balloon drifted forward another foot.

Closer.

And then—between one heartbeat and the next—the space beside the clown was no longer empty.

A second figure stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pennywise. Smaller. Human-sized. The height and build of an average woman, perhaps five-foot-six in her oversized clown shoes. The suit was periwinkle blue instead of blood-white, ruffles crisp and clean. Greasepaint stark white, but the accents lavender and silver. Eyes the same dead orange, yet brighter—carnival lights left burning after hours.

The new clown’s smile was the same impossible stretch, yet it carried the faintest echo of delight.

In a voice high and lilting, syrup-sweet with a razor edge, she spoke:

“A front row seat to our grand performance, isn’t that fun?”

Pennywise’s head rotated one hundred and eighty degrees. No sound. Just liquid motion.

They faced each other. Towering white horror and smaller, woman-sized periwinkle. Twin deadlights. Twin smiles.

Then the mirroring began.

Pennywise raised its right hand—slow, theatrical. The blue clown raised her left at the exact same instant, mirrored flourish. Fingers elongated in perfect symmetry.

Heads tilted—thirty degrees left, thirty degrees right.

Smiles stretched, corners tearing in opposite directions with the same wet sound.

Pennywise whispered toward the pallets: “Come out, little bird… the show’s about to start.”

At the identical moment, with flawless timing, the periwinkle clown spoke the same words backward, beginning where Pennywise would end and finishing where he began:

“…start to about’s show the, bird little… out Come.”

The layered voices created a strange, disorienting harmonic—forward speech and perfect phonetic reversal colliding in the cold air. To Maya, huddled behind the pallets, the blue clown’s words sounded like garbled nonsense, a demonic tongue spoken in reverse, impossible to parse yet sickeningly precise. The frost on the pallets shivered and cracked.

They glided—one step forward, one step mirrored—flanking the hiding place from either side.

The red balloon trembled between them, tiny rapid oscillations.

Maya’s breathing turned to sharp, panicked gasps.

Two clowns. Two smiles. Two sets of deadlights burning into her shadows. One monstrously tall. One the size of a woman.

Pennywise beckoned again. The blue clown mirrored in perfect reverse—yet the gesture still pulled, still invited.

“We’re going to have so much fun, Maya.”

“Maya fun, much so have to going re’we.”

The red balloon popped—not with a bang, but with a soft, wet pfft—like a lung releasing its final breath.

Crimson fluid sprayed outward in a perfect suspended sphere, then fell in slow, syrupy ropes.

Deadlights narrowed to slits—in mirror.

Heads cocked—one side, the other.

For the first time that night, the ancient thing in the white suit made a sound that was not speech, not laughter: a low, grinding, metallic rasp.

It looked.

Really looked.

And the woman-sized blue clown looked back.

Perfect mirror.

Perfect symmetry.

Perfect wrongness.

Then the symmetry shattered.

With sudden, obscene strength, the periwinkle clown slammed one gloved palm into Pennywise’s chest.

The ancient thing skidded backward across the concrete, boots gouging long smoking furrows in the frost. The ruff flared outward as it caught itself, deadlights flaring white-hot.

The blue clown did not glance back.

She turned toward the pallets.

Maya was visible now—curled small, shaking, eyes enormous.

Lavender-gloved hands closed around her gently and lifted her as though she weighed nothing.

She did not scream. She could not.

In that bright, lilting voice, soft and singsong:

“Little girls shouldn’t play with strangers.”

Then the hopping began.

Big, exaggerated, cartoonish bounces that carried them effortlessly over the loading dock, across the rusted fence, down the empty streets toward Ferry Street. Each landing silent, snow barely disturbed. The woman-sized clown moved with impossible lightness, Maya clinging instinctively, face buried against the clean periwinkle ruffles. Her teeth clicked together with every tremor.

As they hopped—light, almost playful—the voice continued:

“It may work out sometimes… but all too often it doesn’t.”

Behind them, Pennywise did not pursue.

Not yet.

It remained half-crouched where it had been thrown, head cocked at an impossible angle. Deadlights wide. Smile torn wider. Something black and wet glistened inside.

In moments they reached the sagging house on Ferry Street. Porch light off. Front door slightly ajar.

The blue clown set Maya down gently on the top step.

Her sneakers touched wood. Her knees wobbled, but held.

The moment her feet were steady—

Absence.

No smoke. No fade.

Only the girl and the cold.

Maya blinked.

Once. Twice.

In her arms—impossibly—was a cyan balloon.

It floated upright, string wrapped loosely around her wrist like a bracelet.

On its glossy surface, in bold black lines, a wide smirking grin—mouth curved higher on one side, one crescent brow arched in sly amusement.

Tied to the bottom of the string, a small white card, edges ragged like notebook paper torn by a child.

Written in purple crayon, big wobbly letters:

Strangers might smile and say “hello”

But some of them want your soul, you know!

Don’t talk, don’t follow, run away fast

Or you might not make it home at last! 😏

Inside the house, a bottle shattered in the kitchen.

A slurred voice yelled something unintelligible.

Maya stared at the balloon.

Then at the empty porch.

Then back at the balloon.

Her small fingers tightened around the string.

Far down the long empty street, a single red balloon rose again—slowly, deliberately—from the place where Pennywise still stood motionless.

The clown’s head was turned toward the house on Ferry Street.

The deadlights had not dimmed.

They were brighter than ever.

In the small hours, the town of Derry, Maine, lay hushed beneath a steady fall of snow. Streetlights buzzed with faint, resigned effort, their glow diffused into soft halos by the drifting flakes. Most of the world was dark: bedroom televisions off, telephones silent on nightstands, the bar TVs at the Rusty Nail switched to late-night infomercials after last call.

Then, without warning, the screens woke.

Across the town they flickered back to life. Living-room sets in split-level houses on West Broadway. The ancient CRT humming in the basement of the old folks' home on Kansas Street. The big console TV above the locked bar at the Rusty Nail. Even the grainy black-and-white security monitor at the 24-hour gas station on Route 7 suddenly burst into violent, saturated color.

No fingers touched remotes. No power buttons were pressed. The screens simply turned on.

And on every one played the same cartoon.

The title card slammed into frame with comic-book sound effects—bright, mocking, dripping in lavender letters that bubbled and popped:

PUNYWISE vs. THE BLUE CLOWN

A jaunty, warped calliope tune began, laced with the rhythmic clap of playground hands.

In the opening scene, Punywise—the pathetic, oversized-shoe version of the nightmare—crouched outside a rotting mill, red balloon bobbing above him, deadlights glowing hungrily as he reached toward a terrified stick-figure girl hiding behind crates.

Then—pop—a second clown burst into frame in a shower of cyan sparkles.

Periwinkle-blue suit, clean ruffles, lavender accents. The same impossible smile, the same burning orange eyes, but brighter, sharper, almost gleeful.

With one casual palm, Periwinkle shoved Punywise aside. The red-and-white clown flew backward in exaggerated slow-motion, arms windmilling, giant shoes leaving cartoon skid marks across the snow. He crashed into a pile of barrels that exploded into harmless confetti.

Periwinkle turned to the girl, scooped her up gently, and began to hop—big, bouncy, cartoon hops—away from the mill.

A sweet, lilting voice-over, unmistakably Periwinkle’s, sang out:

“Little girls shouldn’t play with strangers…”

The cartoon cut to a rapid-fire montage: Periwinkle hopping down moonlit streets with the girl clinging to him, while Punywise scrambled to follow—tripping over his own feet, face-planting into snowbanks, getting stuck in a storm drain. Each time he drew close, Periwinkle glanced back and spat—a fat, glowing loogie that struck Punywise square in the face. The spit sizzled. His greasepaint melted. His smile drooped like wet paper. He wailed in a high, pathetic squeak.

In the final scene, Periwinkle set the girl gently on her porch. The moment her feet touched wood, he vanished in a puff of blue glitter. She was left holding a cyan balloon with a smirking black face. A little card dangled from the string.

The camera zoomed in as she read it aloud in a tiny, trembling voice:

“Strangers might smile and say ‘hello’…

But some of them want your soul, you know!”

The screen cut to black.

White text appeared:

Don’t talk to strangers.

Especially the ones with too many teeth.

The televisions stayed lit for exactly seven seconds after the cartoon ended—long enough for anyone roused by the glow to absorb the final frame—then snapped off simultaneously. Every screen in Derry. Every last one.

By morning, the comics had appeared.

New pages, overnight, taped to stop signs, slipped under windshield wipers, tucked into library books, pinned to community bulletin boards. Same crayon colors. Same brutal humor.

The story had evolved: Punywise mid-hunt, body-slammed by the blue clown. Punywise flying. Punywise melting. Periwinkle hopping away with the child. Final panel: the girl safe on her porch, cyan balloon floating above her, while in the distant background a tiny, pathetic Punywise crawled out of a snowbank, face half-dissolved, one eye dangling like a yo-yo.